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The decline of a board sport - maybe a lesson to be learned?

The OP made a very good observation between the obvious parallel between snowboarding and wakeboarding. With what MC just did to the PWT, I'm afraid the sport may be heading down the same path. Hopefully, others will take note and work to avoid such pitfalls. And maybe, just maybe, that section of this forum that was recently hearing the approach of the Grim Reaper will rise again.

guy that used to surf with us is an avid snowboarder and liked to wakeboard, but his 15yo daughter has only ever snowskiied. he won't buy her a board and she has no interest..

I would highly doubt wake/slalom will go the same route in the short term. surfing, I believe, has started to replace boarding and will continue to do so just as your family. parents get older, all they do is surf and kids will naturally gravitate toward parents activities.

I disagree with many of the points in that article. I am from Ohio and have been living in SC for the past two years. We moved for my wife to attend school here. Anyway, the author says he skis in Colorado. I have been to Winter Park resort. There are a good bit more skiers there than snowboarders. However, on the hills in Ohio nobody skis. I would say 75% or more snowboard. He mentions snowboard sales are down. I bet ski sales are down as well. Sales in general are way down. DUH, look at the economy. I would like to see the numbers, but there are still plenty of skiers and snowboarders.

One of the reasons wakeboarding is shrinking, is no one can afford a boat anymore. Nautiques, MC and Malibu were 50-60k 10 years ago new. Moomba LSV was 39999 new 8 yrs ago. The people that can afford these boats are mostly older individuals with jobs and cant take hard crashes, so they surf.

I just do not agree with the article you posted. But I do think a majority of people are moving toward surfing.

On a side note, I will take a set or two on a choppy day or when I am worn out. How do people surf 100% of the time? Do they not get bored?

I agree and diagree, but as a Avid Slalom skier and a snow skier, i really never saw the reason to change. As mentioned in both forms of the sports, people are not willing to risk the crashes, and injuries etc, that sadly are very easy to do.

I have tryed both and i still Enjoy Slalom and 2 skis over wakeboards and snow boards anytime. Many Young adults who grew up snowboarding or ones that switched for awhile are going back. My Daughters boyfriend is a prime example. Started skiing young and has now switched back to skis due to being tired of getting beat up.. Granted he still skis on th reckless side, he finds more control and less injuries skiing and Now he has started to give in to Slalom.

He never waterskied,before wakeboard, but from watching myself and others ,he has decided that there is more than enough challenge, to give him his adrenaline rush and way less likely resulting injuries from pushing yourself,to accel in the sport.

Surfing is another nice sport, way easier on the body and seems to be very family friendly,only problem is it takes certain boats and pretty much need to be set up fairly drastically to do this properly.... Not gonna happen from runabouts and outs boards... At least not safely.

Maybe, just maybe, but kinda unlikely Ski boats(DD)'s are not as dead as some may think or its definetely gonna put more enfacise or TRUE Cross over boats. Most manufacturers have a boat that they say\call a cross over but as most true skiers will tell you there are few good ones.

Not to piss some off, but Supra in particular really has NO crossover thats worth skiing ,luckily the Moomba Outback fills in for that void, but some others have kinda the same issues.

Do not get me wrong, there are a couple exceptional cross overs ie Nautique 200Sport and Malibu VTX but with starting price points of about 80k, kinda hard to sell these?? to the average guy wanting to do it all.

Maybe, ski boats or more econoline boats are gonna have to be a thing of the future???

I grew up snow skiing and water skiing. Over the years due to career/life I have got out of both sports. If I was 16-19 again and was headed to the ski slope I would snowboard. But honestly I am 43 years old and I know how hard the ground is so I will stick to skiing. Many of my friends still go out west or up north and they tell me their kids are snowboarding while the parents ski. It's what they grew up doing.

It wasn't until recently I decided to purchase a boat and get my kids involved in water sports. I bought kids skis and a wakeboard and honestly all the kids want to wakeboard. Me and my buddies are learning to wakeboard and I can't even get the guys who used to slalom to do it anymore. They want to wakeboard! I did pick up up surf board this winter but honestly I even like wake boarding more than skiing. On the north end of lake lanier we have only seen 1 guy surfing. Heck we didn't even know what they were doing at first. Of course on the North end you also have Corey Bradley and Jon Hunt taking sets and everyone just pulls over and watches the magic.

I still slalom some but honestly I want to learn more about wake boarding. Sure it is more dangerous but I love it. I am still looking to surf some as well and time will tell how well my body can hold up to wake boarding.

I just want my kids to do something active on the water. That stupid tube doesn't count.

The decline of a board sport - maybe a lesson to be learned?

I love to snow ski. If it wasn't so freaking hard for me to get up on a snowboard I might do that, but I'm 47, don't bend well and I'm carrying to much weight. That means just getting down and up on a snowboard wears me out. I've done it several times over the last few years and enjoyed it but I've fallen much harder snowboarding than I ever fell skiing.

Same sort of goes for water sports. When we bought the boat I got a slalom ski and a wakeboard. I mainly wake boarded because the slalom killed me physically. I enjoyed the wakeboard but then we took up surfing and I could do that a long longer. Didn't hurt as much to fall either. I'm still feeling pretty challenged by surfing so I don't see getting bored with it. Surfing is now the primary activity in our boat.

The decline of a board sport - maybe a lesson to be learned?

I read that outside magazine article and found myself doubting the 'facts'. Interestingly, there are some links within that article (and right after it) that point to another article that completely disagrees with that article and points strongly to the economy and other facets to account for the stats. It's all subjective...

I think part of it is that wakesurfing is relatively new so its the cool sexy new thing to try.... I think it will balance out but in my case I was way to hard on my body when I was snowboarding as a teenager. Now it cant handle the pounding of wake boarding and im not content just to jump the wake.. so I surf and there is lots of tricks for me to learn as well.

The decline of a board sport - maybe a lesson to be learned?

I still disagree with wake surfing be the cool new thing. I understand why the older boating crowd enjoys it but wakeboarding still has it's place. I can count on one finger the number of times we surfed last summer and on the river by and large wake boarding is more prevalent than surfing is. I will say the rise in surfing popularity definitely has something to do with the cost of boats keeping younger people off the water this decreasing the number of wakeboarders